


Give me your hand, give me your sound

by carbonbased000



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, Velvet Goldmine
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1970s, First Time, Glam Rock, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-07-25 13:20:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20026486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carbonbased000/pseuds/carbonbased000
Summary: It's the Velvet Goldmine AU absolutely no one asked for!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! So this is an attempt to blend my very first fandom, Velvet Goldmine, with the Fall Out Boy fandom, which has brought me so many good things (and wonderful people) in the past few months. It is basically bandom characters inside a Velvet Goldmine/glam rock RPF universe, but there are some actual VG characters sprinkled in as well as quite a lot of music nerdery and a bunch of lyrics from all over the place. So it's a mess! But a fun mess, I hope. 
> 
> This is a WIP and I am hoping/planning to do weekly updates. 
> 
> You don’t need to have seen _Velvet Goldmine_ to read this, but if you haven’t, well, it’s an awesome film and you should totally watch it! If you’d like to have a general idea of what it’s like, I recommend [this BFI article](https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/velvet-goldmine-todd-haynes-david-bowie).
> 
> Title is from _Velvet Goldmine_ (the song) by David Bowie, because I am Very Original. 
> 
> *****WARNING – This chapter contains a brief mention of a suicide attempt*****

_Although what you are about to read is a work of fiction,  
it should nevertheless be played at maximum volume._

*

The New York Times, Tuesday, August 6, 1974

**VAUGHN FOUND ALIVE IN SAN FRANCISCO**

_ Six months after his mysterious disappearance, pop singer Patrick Vaughn has resurfaced last night in San Francisco, CA. The 22-year-old musician had been last seen leaving his Greenwich Village home on the morning of last February 1st. The police had been investigating the disappearance as a missing person case. Vaughn’s family and friends reportedly feared a suicide attempt as a concerning note was found in Vaughn’s home in the days following his disappearance. Until yesterday, when police sources reported that Vaughn was admitted in serious but stable condition at San Francisco General Hospital, putting to rest all speculation about his death.  _

*

_ Summer 1971 _

The very first time Patrick saw him, Pete Wentz was on stage, howling on a background of distorted guitars, his bare chest covered in baby oil and gold glitter, the microphone cable twisted around his arms. He looked like a Renaissance Saint Sebastian, his eyes crazy with painful rapture. He was golden all over except for the black around his eyes, in the tattoos painting his skin, and in the wild hair framing his face. Patrick watched him and wanted him, suddenly and ferociously. 

They were in a small, filthy club in a dark, seedy part of LA, and Patrick had been escorted out and sent back to the hotel immediately after the show. As he looked out the car window at the street lights breaking up the darkness he kept thinking about golden and black, golden and black – there was melody and rhythm in that alternation. He wanted to know everything about Pete Wentz, and to write him songs, and to get him alone behind a locked door.

*

They were in LA for a few more weeks, working on the mix of his second album. He didn’t have much leeway here – his days were planned to the half-hour, and they were all staying at the same hotel, Jerry’s suite on the same floor as his own room. But he started gathering information, as subtle as he could be, sending his entourage out to extract gossip from other musicians, journalists, groupies. 

The main story went like this: Pete Wentz, the twenty-four-year-old founder of the influential garage band, The Snitches, came from the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. 

“Though rock folklore claims far more primitive origins...” said Gerard in his ghost-story voice, waving his fingers spookily. He was artfully sprawled on the Persian rug of Jerry’s hotel suite, his head in Frank’s lap. Frank was carding a hand through Gerard’s bleached orange hair, eyes closed, a forgotten cigarette that by now was three quarters ash in his other hand. 

“Yeah… what’s that even mean?” asked Patrick. 

“I dunno, but the phrase ‘raised by wolves’ was kind of a leitmotif.” Apparently, Gerard had gotten his intel from one of Pete’s former bandmates, who pretty much hated his guts and had been blackout drunk after Gerard was done plying him with cocktails. So forgive Patrick for taking that with a grain of salt. 

Anyway. The next part of the story was well-known, and Patrick tried very hard not to think too hard about it. When Pete was sixteen, he was discovered by his mother inside the family car with a hose running from the exhaust pipe, and promptly shipped off for six months of electric shock therapy. Amongst other side effects, the treatment had caused him to flip out every time he heard an electric guitar. During his performances he would cut up his arms, jump from the stage, fling himself onto the crowd.

“Hmm, he could be good, maybe… if you like that kind of uncultured, rough garage stuff,” said Jerry, from his perch on the mahogany desk, waving around his big fat cigar like the overcompensating bastard that he absolutely was. 

At that, Frank sat up abruptly, dislodging Gerard, who followed his movement without complaint and sat back against the wall beside him. “Wait a minute,” Frank said, brandishing the butt of his cigarette and glaring at Jerry. “What are you talking about? That guy’s music is unbelievable. Are you fucking kidding me with this? That guy’s music is… like… like…”

“It’s just indifferent to your feelings,” said Gerard, finishing Frank’s sentence and taking two fresh smokes from their lacquer case. “The music doesn’t care if you like it or not. It doesn’t give a fuck.” He lit both and smiled down at Frank, who flashed him one of his blinding smiles in exchange for one of the cigarettes in Gerard’s mouth. 

“Would the two of you just  _ please _ get a room?” pleaded Mikey.

“We have a room, it’s right next door from yours” said Frank. 

“Yes, I am aware. We share a wall. I am definitely aware,” said Mikey with a resigned sigh. “And if you could maybe not–”

“Anyway, the guy’s a junkie now,” said Hayley, cutting him off.

“Who’s a junkie?” asked Mikey.

“Wentz,” she said. “The Snitches disbanded and no one will go near him anymore. He’s a fucking trainwreck.”

Unfortunately, this seemed to be an undisputed fact. Whoever you asked, the Pete Wentz story always seemed to end the same way: the band had fallen apart after one vicious fight too many, and their record company had dropped them after only one album, leaving their frontman with no money and no place to live. He’d left Chicago for LA, where it was unclear how he hadn’t yet starved to death. 

“There are, however, some... conjectures,” was how Jerry put it, with a filthy twist of his mouth around the cigar. Patrick really hoped  _ that _ part of the story wasn’t true. 

He’d been very careful not to let Jerry realize the magnitude of his fascination with Wentz – once Jerry knew that something was important to him, that thing immediately became a bargaining chip in his hand, and it was better to keep those to a minimum. But since it was useless to try and keep anything from his manager completely, the best strategy was usually to come up with a convincing half-truth. 

He had to start somewhere, and to him, nothing came as easy as music. 

It wasn’t like Pete Wentz was a musical genius. What he had was a stage presence that Patrick could only dream about (and if he actually did, and if one or ten of those dreams included him on his knees, backstage, his fingers caught in the waistband of Pete’s skin-tight silver leather pants and his mouth on Pete’s dick, well, that was between Patrick and his subconscious) and, even if no one seemed to notice or care, he wrote the best lyrics Patrick had ever heard – they were like poetry, a world apart from his own silly pop songs. Full of violence and nihilism, sure, but also rich with metaphors and clever turns of phrase, beautiful in their instability. The lyrics made such a stark contrast with the raw, discordant music that it was almost disturbing – which was probably the desired effect, when Patrick thought about it. 

So he listened to the Snitches’ album over and over in the relative privacy of his hotel room, and then he wrote a handful of songs that could be seen as a reasonable hybrid between his current sound and the drug-fueled nightmares spinning on his turntable. 

It was high time for a change, anyway. He was already a long way from the artsy hippie stuff he had done at the very beginning, following in his father’s footsteps. Back home, Jerry kept dragging him to all these crazy parties, dinners, neverending drinks and nightclubbing; two or three times a week they ended up in the back room at Max’s Kansas City. He liked talking to the artists and the drag queens and the Factory kids, but he really didn’t enjoy all the drama. He did what he could to get out of there before the really crazy stuff started up – usually he managed it fine, since Jerry never stopped him from leaving with a pretty girl on his arm. “Sure, sure, have fun. As a matter of fact, keep it up,” he’d say. “That shit’s good for your image, kid.” 

Anyway, Patrick had gotten the message loud and clear – all the good stuff belonged in that back room. He should become something that belonged there, too. 

As luck would have it, now that they were in LA, either Jerry didn’t know the local party scene all that well, or he didn’t care about it enough to distract Patrick from the long sessions in the studio. There was the occasional industry party that he must attend, some journalist or music exec to be entertained with dinner or drinks, but the rest of the time, he wrote songs meant for a stranger, and he woke up blushing from those dreams, and he waited. 

*

“Oh, the glitter guy?” Hayley scrunched up her nose while blending more coral blush on Patrick’s cheekbone. “I don’t really see the appeal. He looked kind of…”

“Wild?” sighed Patrick. The wildlife analogies were getting old fast. But he really needed to talk to someone about this, and he trusted Hayley. Well, to an extent – he didn’t trust her implicitly, like Frank. But Frank was not a good confidante on matters of the heart. Too protective, and still slightly uncomfortable with the bisexual thing. Well, with  _ Patrick’s  _ bisexual thing. He didn’t appear to have any issues with his own.

“I was going to say grimy, but wild works, too. Like a wild dog in need of a good bath,” she said, leaning back and looking at Patrick’s face critically. “But if you like him, you like him. The heart wants what it wants.”

Patrick took a deep breath. Getting offended on behalf of a guy he had never actually met would probably look suspicious. “I just can’t stop thinking about his show.”

Hayley looked at him like she had his number. “Come on, I need to do your eyes.”

Patrick went on, eyes closed, “I really want to write him a song. He’s so–”

“Shh, be still now.” 

It was kind of soothing, the shadow brush gliding over his eyelids again and again. Patrick breathed through it. Of course he wanted to write him a song – he wanted to write him a thousand, he wanted so much more, but one song was the half-truth he was going with and he had to stick to it. He opened his eyes once his eyelids were weighted down with powder. Hayley made him look up, dipped the thinnest brush in the dark blue glitter and lined his eyes.

“Go on,” she said, handing him the mascara. 

Patrick leaned closer to the mirror. He put on the first coat and waited for it to dry. He’d had a bassline in his head since that morning and he’d much rather have stayed in and worked on the new songs than go to the stupid press conference. He said as much to Hayley while he put on the final coat of mascara. His own painted face pouted back at him in the mirror, recognizably unrecognizable, see-through lashes now glossy black. 

“He’s so... what?” pressed Hayley. The silence had gone on long enough that Patrick could pretend not to remember who they were talking about. But he didn’t always want to pretend.

“I don’t know. Just… different,” he said, as Hayley teased up his hair before dousing it in hairspray. But there was another word on the tip of his tongue.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _j'ai besoin de plus de rêves et moins de vie_

_ Fall 1971 _

“Hey! That’s  _ mine _ , you little fucker!” 

Joe jumped up from his perch on the kitchen table, where he was looking through Pete’s notebook. “Fuckin’ hell, man, calm down. If this is how you treat your band, I get why they dumped your ass.”

Pete tried taking a deep breath, like everyone was always telling him to do. No luck. He was already making a fist and aiming it tentatively in the direction of Joe’s head when the asshole started reading aloud. 

“Kiss me like the ocean breeze… sounds good. It’s a song, right?” 

And just like that, Pete deflated. “What do you think? No band, no songs, Trohman. It’s just some shit I’ve been dreaming about, I dunno. I need to get it out of my head, otherwise...”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Fucking nightmares, man,” said Joe, shaking his head. His hair was particularly gigantic this morning, Pete noticed.

There was still some coffee in the pot. Pete rinsed a cup in the sink, making space between the stacks of greasy dishes, dirty glasses and at least three different kinds of smoking paraphernalia. He poured himself some coffee and sat down in the chair closest to the window. Shining through the grimy glass, the early afternoon October sun made a golden slice of warmth, and he tried soaking it in. He hadn’t stopped feeling cold for one second since he’d stopped shooting up two months before.

He had no shortage of nightmares, and Joe could hardly fail to notice now that they lived together and every other night he’d hear Pete screaming or find him in the kitchen, chain smoking and filling his notebook at four in the morning. So he didn’t correct Joe, but the thing was – weirdly enough, the new lyrics weren’t about nightmares at all. It was more like a recurring dream, and in a way it was the reason he was here, crashing at Joe’s place in NYC, having finally extricated himself from the Ashlee situation back in California, going on two months clean. 

It had started the night after his last gig in LA. He had been pretty out of it at the club and he’d covered himself in fucking glitter on stage for some reason, so maybe that was why, when he’d finally passed out in Ashlee’s bed – alone, because once again she was somewhere else with somebody else – he’d started seeing all this gold and flashes of fair skin among white sheets. A few nights after that he had the same dream again, and again, and after a while he’d started calling it his ivory and gold dream. Nothing much happened in the dream, and even if he was definitely tangled up with someone else without any clothes involved, they didn’t have sex. It was mostly like being in a strange place – but it was warm and soft and lovely, everything that his days were not. He never saw the other person’s face, only their skin, incredibly pale and smooth. Sometimes he woke up hard and gasping, sometimes only vaguely turned on, but every time he felt this crazy sense of longing and he just _knew_ that what he wanted was in New York. 

It wasn’t like he had any reason to stay, anyway. 

So he called up Andy, who told him Joe had just gotten a new place in the Lower East Side and could maybe put him up, and also keep an eye on him in case Pete wanted to maybe try and clean up. Pete decided that phone call was fucking fate slapping him across the face, packed a suitcase and got on a Greyhound headed for the opposite coast. 

*

It was late one Friday night and he was alone – Joe was out at Max’s Kansas City, but Pete didn’t feel like going out. Which was okay, he couldn’t have a fucking babysitter every single night after all. He had some valium and vodka for company, but they hadn’t been kind enough to knock him out. He was watching TV, the light in the apartment weak and harsh at the same time; sharp angles everywhere, and cold drafts seeping in through the windows. 

The main issue with Joe’s place was that it overlooked Tompkins Square Park, which meant Pete only had to go down three flights of stairs, out the front door, and across the road to get a stamp bag from a dealer and ruin all his nice progress, and on certain nights, when he hadn’t slept in god knew how long, it was really hard to remember why he shouldn’t do exactly that.

Pete laid down on the couch and wished he could close his eyes and open them in the morning or maybe never. This fucking night was neverending. He couldn’t remember what being warm felt like. He wanted it so bad, he’d shoot the sunshine into his veins. Sunshine, or something else – his blood alone wasn’t cutting him anymore.

He got up, put on his jacket. It would be just this once, just to get through the night. Looking out the window, he could see people moving around in the dark below. He was already halfway out the door when the phone started to ring. 

Years later, Pete will look back at that night and see very clearly how meeting Patrick saved his life. He was fooling himself with that “just this once” bullshit – without music, without a band to keep him occupied, there was no doubt that he was going to go back to heroin as his full time occupation until it killed him. 

On the phone, Joe said, “There’s a guy down here wants to meet you. You remember him, on  _ Melody Maker. _ ” He was shouting over the noise. “Pete, you really gotta get down here.”

Pete did remember. Vaughn, was the guy’s name. It was a question about his favorite songs, and he’d said he liked the Snitches, which wasn’t something a lot of people would admit. 

It wasn’t like he had anything better to do, anyway. 

*

Just inside the archway that led into the back room there were some people crouching, everyone smoking and talking and looking at each other. The feeling he always got when he came here was that most of those people were not that nice, but it was okay – he wasn’t that nice a person, either. Everything was bathed in the fluorescent red glow of the neon sculpture hanging in a corner of the room, and all around there was so much smoke, as if a big white cloud had descended.

Joe was waving at him from one of the booths. He made his way there and Joe got up and started making introductions, even though he knew Pete would forget all those names as soon as he heard them. He nodded to everyone and sat down next to Joe and a blonde chick in a golden lamé jacket and not much else. Everyone at the table was looking at him. Waiting to be entertained by the half-domesticated vagrant. He should have probably smashed a beer bottle over his head or something, earn his keep, but he didn’t feel like it. He stole Joe’s glass, drank down whatever was in it, made a face, and looked round the table, meeting all those pairs of eyes, none of them very friendly or curious. Well, fuck it. “Someone wanted to meet me, right?”

“That would be Patrick, he’s  _ such _ a big fan,” said the blonde girl with a giggle that fell a bit flat. “He’s just outside getting some air.” Everyone laughed and went back to whatever they were chatting about before Pete had come in, proceeding to ignore him. Joe was wasted, leaning awfully close to Lamé Girl, talking about Velvet Underground or something.

Pete was pretty sure the dealers in Tompkins Square would have been more welcoming. Better conversationalists, too. He felt trapped in the narrow booth in the windowless room. He was having trouble keeping still and his eyes were stinging, because of all the smoke or maybe because he hadn’t slept in almost three days. He stood up too fast, knocking over a couple of beer bottles, and somebody laughed. 

He turned around and made for the exit. What a bust. 

*

Outside, he paused as the cold wind slapped him and sneaked into his jacket. He looked around in search of the elusive guy – he couldn’t remember his name already, god, his fucking brain – thinking this would be the final chance before he’d go home and do whatever it took to turn off for a bit. 

At that moment, two things happened. 

First, Pete saw the sun, peeking out from behind the building across the street and painting everything golden.

Second, he understood what that fucking dream was all about. 

Taking the few steps that separated him from the boy leaning against the brick wall a few feet down was not a conscious decision so much as an inevitability. Pete stopped in front of him and felt his throat go dry. 

The flesh-and-blood rendition of his dream was smoking, head tilted back, eyes closed, gold lashes against pale cheekbones, delicate ivory fingers bringing the cigarette to his lips. The dream hadn’t really done his lips justice, Pete thought inanely, but the spun gold of his hair was just right. 

This can’t be, said the very small part of Pete’s mind that wasn’t past all reason (and sounded suspiciously like Andy). It’s simply impossible. It’s hallucinations, withdrawal, insomnia. He’s just a stranger. 

Pete was standing too close and staring at him like a freak, but when the boy finally opened his eyes he just smiled at him and said, “Oh, there you are.”

He looked at Pete, taking him in with ocean-colored eyes. Pete was starting to think that whoever directed his dreams was a fucking amateur. He tried to find some words. He knew he could talk anyone’s ear off with his stories about growing up in the bad part of Chicago and the crazy people in LA and whatever his favored mix of drugs currently was. He also could find better words when the wrong mood took him, beautiful and terrible words that filled his notebooks, but right now, all he could say was, “You’re–” and then he stopped, because what the hell was he supposed to say. You’re my ivory and gold dream? As cool as his little stranger seemed to be, everyone had their limits.

“Patrick,” the boy said, and his voice dispelled all doubt. It was silk and cream.  _ Mine _ , said Pete’s brain, dazed,  _ You  _ are _ my fucking dream _ .

The boy – Patrick – took half a step forward, away from the wall and right into Pete’s space, reaching up and fixing the collar of Pete’s leather jacket around his neck so that the wind didn’t bite at his skin anymore. “Hi, Pete,” he said, letting his hand fall back to his side. Pete didn’t want to hear his own name on anybody else’s lips ever again, it just couldn’t fucking compare, “I’ve been wanting to meet you.”

“Yeah? I’ve been dreaming about you,” he found himself saying, and immediately hoped that it would come off as a joke. Patrick laughed softly. Pete added his laugh to the growing list of things he could, and probably would, write lyrics about. 

“Me too,” Patrick said. The smoke of his cigarette traced a ladder to the dawn sky. “Oh, look, the sun is out. You want to have breakfast?”

Pete nodded. He didn’t trust his voice. He had just realized that he didn’t feel cold anymore. 

*

The last time Pete had eaten an actual breakfast was probably at his parents’ place, when he’d just started trying to detox. Well, the  _ first _ time he’d tried – and failed. Lately, he simply was never hungry, he just gave in and ate something when he felt too shaky. But there was Patrick, looking at him expectantly over their plates, warming his hands over the steam rising from his coffee, and Pete took a bite of his omelet, and then another. And then he looked down at his empty plate and thought,  _ Huh _ , and he drank his water, and gestured for more coffee.

The waitress came over to refill both their cups. Patrick thanked her, smiling. “No problem, hon,” she said, clearly charmed. Pete didn’t blame her at all. Patrick was generous with his smiles, and his smiles were fucking devastating.

Patrick was laid back and quiet. He listened and looked at Pete like he was studying him and then spoke softly. They talked about their music and their careers. Pete was between record deals, which Patrick seemed to know already. He told Pete how seeing him perform in LA had been so inspiring – Patrick used words like “inspiring” unironically, and Pete was so completely enchanted it wasn’t even funny. 

“Actually, after I saw you… I might have written something,” Patrick said.

“You wrote me a song?”

“Uhm... I wrote you a few,” said Patrick, lowering his eyes and blushing, managing to hit all of Pete’s buttons simultaneously, including several that he didn’t even know he had. 

Pete didn’t even care about the dreams anymore. Clearly, they were just meant to bring him here, to this 24-hour diner with a wrinkly waitress, a dusty jukebox, and red vinyl booths, drinking watery coffee with a goddamn angel – Pete had been struggling with that thought for a few hours now, but he couldn’t avoid it anymore, it was simply the truth – a goddamn  _ angel _ , who appeared to be into him and his music, and who had written him songs. Plural. What the fuck.

“Thank you,” he said, because he had to start somewhere. 

“Well, wait until you hear them,” Patrick laughed under his breath. “But really, I just wanna help,” he went on, looking up at him through golden lashes, and Pete lost himself in the blue shimmer of his eyes for a minute. “I think your music is– I mean. I’m in love with your music, really. I wish I’d thought of something like that.”

Pete took Patrick’s hand and held it like it was the most precious thing he’d ever touched in his life. And it probably was. Patrick looked down at their joined hands, and when Pete  threaded their fingers together he felt him shudder. So Pete said,  “Want to come back to my place and play me those songs?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No update next week because I'm going to be away – and we're all going to be busy reading all the wonderful fics from the Peterick summer challenge <3 
> 
> Come say hi on [Tumblr](https://carbonbased000.tumblr.com/)!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _If I had a throne you could call it home  
if I cry, my tears are yours, to open any frozen doors_

It was almost nine and Pete hadn’t officially slept in three days. In the morning light he looked like shit, he was sure – Patrick, well, he was just as flawless as he’d been in the soft dawn glow. Standing outside the diner, he looked like he didn’t really belong: an ethereal figure cut out from the canvas of a Pre Raphaelite painting and pasted on the incongruous background of the 11th Street sidewalk. 

He was so pretty that Pete wanted to frame him, put him under crystal like the rare and exquisite specimen he was. He also wanted, just as badly, to mess him up. Pete was used to his own conflicting desires, but he usually could indulge at least one of the two – now, in a daze of sleep deprivation and downers and alcohol and raw need, he could barely restrain himself from reaching out and taking and ruining. 

Patrick looked down at the small distance between them – it was less than half a step, closing it would have been as easy as breathing – and took Pete’s hand. “You’re shaking,” he said. 

“Just tired,” Pete replied. He really didn’t want to get into the whole sorry history of his drug troubles, sleep troubles, everything troubles. Patrick’s lips straightened for a second, then took the soft shape of a smile once again. 

“Where’s your place?”

“Just a few blocks away. But– you’re sure you want to...? Don’t you have something to do today?”

“Probably, yeah, but I’d rather stay with you a little longer. If that’s okay?” He looked up at Pete, thick gold lashes brushing pale cheekbones.

Pete thought,  _ Okay? I don’t know… Would it be okay if I locked you in my room and completely wrecked you and never let you go? Would it be okay if I asked you to kiss me and hurt me and erase my memories with your touch and break me into pieces and put me back together in the shape of your choosing? _ What he said was, “That’s okay, yeah” and he snaked his arm around Patrick’s shoulders to keep him close, to ward away the cold, to mask his shaking – because he fucking wanted to, and he got the feeling he could. Patrick put his own arm around Pete’s waist, his fingers sliding dry and warm under the hem of his leather jacket and under the thin cotton of his t-shirt and resting on his skin. 

They were almost of a height – Pete had maybe a couple of inches on Patrick – and they walked to the apartment like that, never letting go. They passed the church with the stained-glass windows in St Marks Place and the bodega where Pete sometimes remembered to buy milk or cigarettes to try and stay on Joe’s good side and the bagel place. All of that was wrapped in a haze, Pete’s awareness of Patrick’s touch eclipsing any other information coming in through his senses. The last time he had felt anything that intense was probably with a needle stuck to the inside of his thigh. 

When he had to disentangle himself from Patrick to get through the front door of Joe’s building, Pete realized just how much his touch had grounded him on the way there, as the shaking started up again, hard, not only in his hands now but all over.

Shame was a funny thing. He’d thought it had given up on him years ago. Maybe the first time he’d gone down on some guy in exchange for a dose, or that time Ash had told him on the phone, in detail, how she had fucked two of his bandmates while he was staying with his parents in Chicago – but no. As Patrick watched him shake, Pete felt a rubber band of shame tighten around his ribs and squeeze. He was just a fucking junkie, so fucked up he couldn’t even walk, couldn’t even stand still–

Patrick watched him for a long moment, and then he got closer, and he circled Pete’s wrist with one pale hand and pressed his thumb right on Pete’s pulse and told him, so calm, so serious, “You’re alright,” which for some fucking mysterious reason stopped the freak out right in his tracks. 

“Okay,” said Pete, breathing, breathing. “What the fuck. Come on, we’re on the third floor.”

When they got inside, Pete was still half out of his head – everything in the room moving, his peripheral vision full of rain – but Patrick didn’t ask what the fuck was wrong with him, and he didn’t get scared, and he didn’t leave him there. He sat Pete down on the couch and he kneeled down in front of him and he took his face in his hands and said, “Pete, look at me. Listen to me.”

Pete looked into those riptide eyes. They were full of concern and determination and affection. They’d known each other for a few hours and yet here Patrick was, this big mystery, the one good thing in Pete’s life. He listened. Patrick’s next words were, “Let me look after you. What do you need?”

Pete felt like laughing and crying at the same time. “Everything,” he said. “I’m a fucking mess. I haven’t slept in days, for starters.”

“Okay. Where’s your room?” Patrick asked him, softly, softly, like he was talking to a small child, easily spooked. Which wasn’t that far from the truth. Pete pointed down the hallway with one trembling finger. 

Patrick urged him up, put his hands under his elbows to guide him; once they were inside, he closed the door behind them and pushed Pete down on the bed, gently, gently. Pete went. He felt like there was something he should say, something he should do, but he couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember anything that wasn’t this room, that wasn’t Patrick and his own unmade bed. Patrick went to the window and closed the blinds. Pete felt some of the pain in his head bleed out as the room darkened, and watched as Patrick came back towards the bed in the low light.

Patrick started undressing him. He moved so slowly that Pete could have asked him to stop if he wanted to – but he didn’t. He felt like he was caught in a spell or a Thorazine trip or something. He let Patrick take off his boots and jeans, coax him out of his jacket and under the blankets, watching as Patrick stripped down to his undershirt and briefs and slipped under the covers next to him. They turned on their sides, facing each other, so close. Patrick started to sing, softly, softly, stroking Pete’s bangs back from his forehead, running his fingers down his cheek. Pete sighed and closed his eyes; he tried to place the song Patrick was singing but the words weren’t familiar. Something about dancing. 

“Patrick,” he said, half delirious, almost sure that this was just another dream. “Patrick, I didn’t know what I needed, I didn’t have a fucking clue... but it was just this. You singing to me. Just this.”

“I will sing to you every day, if you want me to,” Patrick whispered, and lay his golden head down on Pete’s dirty pillow. Pete realized his eyelids were heavy as lead, his body sinking into the mattress. He let himself fall and slept and slept. 

*

He was back in the good dream. The sheets were rougher than usual, the room was darker, but everything else was the same. There was warmth coming from his side and he tried to get closer, half opening his eyes to find himself up close to familiar ivory skin. There was a small stray thought at the back of his mind, trying to make him notice something, but he squashed it back, not wanting to wake up. He never wanted to wake up from these dreams. He buried his face in the milky curve of that throat and breathed in the golden honey scent that lived there. Closer, closer. He shifted, slid his leg between cream-pale thighs, soft as new snow, running his fingers through spun gold hair, and heard his name whispered on a sigh that brushed against his ear like velvet. This had never happened before – everything had always been wordless, both dreamer and dream nameless. He startled and would have woken up if not for the fact that he was already awake, and this was Patrick, in his bed, and it was real. 

“Pete,” Patrick sighed again, holding him close, stroking his hands from the hair behind his neck to the sensitive dip at the small of his back, and again, again, his hands so warm through the thin cotton of Pete’s shirt. 

Pete still felt slow, like he was moving through syrup, but at the same time so gloriously sober, so sure he would never need to get artificially high again if he could just have this: Patrick’s skin under his hands, Patrick’s voice in his ear, his lips – fuck,  _ his lips _ . He tilted his head back and lost a few moments falling deep into Patrick’s eyes and then Patrick glanced down at his lips and Pete was kissing him, slow and deep. He wanted to ruin Patrick for all other kisses, make him forget that he could get this from other people, get him hooked – their lips sliding together, Pete’s teeth on Patrick’s lush lower lip, his tongue softly stroking his mouth open. Patrick kissed back, small biting kisses between one gasping breath and the next and, obviously, it was Pete who was already addicted. He kissed him and kissed him until they had to catch their breath and he rested his forehead against Patrick’s. They got rid of the clothes they had slept in, helping with eager hands, stroking warmth with fingers and lips on newly uncovered skin.

Pete moved on top, narrow hips sliding between soft thighs like the missing piece of a puzzle, their bodies pressed flush. Patrick’s cock was hard and insistent against his hip. He was pretty even there, pink and thick and lovely. Pete ground down slow and dirty and groaned while Patrick made a noise that should have been recorded and saved for posterity, a pitch-perfect high note dripping with sex and need. Pete could jerk off to that noise alone for the next ten years, if he lived that long, he thought, and then Patrick shoved a hand between them and flattened his palm across his belly, then lower, lower, and then he curled his fingers around his cock and Pete didn’t think anymore.

It was just a handjob, nothing fancy, and Pete had definitely had some fancy, kinky sex in his life, but somehow nothing had ever felt like this. He knew all about quick, dirty fucks in club back rooms, about jailbait groupies ready to get on their knees before him – but now he didn’t feel that rush for  _ more _ , he just felt so fucking good, pleasure flowing pure and smooth throughout all of him like opium, the tips of his fingers and toes tingling with warmth. 

“Patrick” he rasped, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “More, please.” Patrick stroked him off slow and sweet, kissing him all the while, until Pete had to break the kiss to bury his face in his shoulder and moan helplessly. Patrick nuzzled his cheek and kissed him again, hungrily, then he looked down at where he was stroking him, and said, “Oh, I really want to blow you next time.”

Pete’s pleasure centers were supposed to be all fucked up from the smack, and sometimes he’d feared he would never experience a really good orgasm again, but in that moment he knew that that was all bullshit: he thought about those lips wrapped around his dick and his whole being dissolved in white light and white heat.

It took a minute to get back into his own body and remember how to breathe right. Patrick was panting and flushed beneath him, breathtakingly beautiful, gloriously hard against Pete’s thigh.

“What do you want, baby?” Pete asked, and Patrick writhed, shifting desperately against him to get some friction, and he said, his voice breaking, “Just touch me, please.”

So Pete did. He touched every fucking inch of him, marking that flawless skin wherever he went, the sounds pouring from Patrick’s lips going straight to his head. He nipped at his throat and grazed his nails down his chest and came back up to bite at his nipples while clutching hard at his hips, pressing his fingers into the only softness on that slender body, then slid down to lick and bite softly at the inside of his thighs, sucking on tender white skin until it bruised red and purple; only when Patrick was gasping for air, twisting his fingers in the sheets at his sides, begging  _ please, oh please _ , and saying Pete’s name over and over like a prayer, so utterly, beautifully out of control, only then did he slide up, one arm pinning Patrick’s hips, the other reaching up to take his hand, and took that pretty cock in his mouth, swallowing him down and looking up to watch him fall apart as he came with Pete’s name on his lips. 

He was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

While Patrick was still coming down, trying to catch his breath, Pete moved up his body and kissed him desperately, thinking wildly that he would gladly give him all the oxygen from his own lungs if it meant they could never stop kissing. He was suddenly so scared that this was just a dream after all, that as soon as their bodies weren’t pressed together anymore that unbelievable creature would fade away like smoke. Patrick kissed him back, sweet as sugar, with his eyes closed and a sigh like a song. He clutched Pete’s bicep with one hand, his touch grounding him once again. It was enough to unravel the spiral in his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patrick’s lullaby is T. Rex’s [Cosmic Dancer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMfjA4gyEcU&list=PLbF_xfEdcitRMX3fWfoU3I16xCanlzEyW&index=12)
> 
> So this is the first time I've written anything smutty. Any feedback would be really, seriously appreciated. I promise the plot will advance next week, but the boys had to get this out of their system first.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _How can you just leave me standing_   
_Alone in a world that's so cold?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, it's getting a bit weird. And angsty. Bear with me if you can, I promise they'll find each other again... eventually.

_ Winter 1984 _

Sitting at the piano, working on something new, Patrick closes his eyes and goes back to something old. 

His first night with Pete.

His first night with Pete was a morning. A morning that had lengthened into afternoon and evening and night. They’d barely left the bed until morning had come once again and real life had finally intruded in the form of Pete’s roommate, reporting that Jerry had been freaking out when, on leaving Max’s, he couldn’t find Patrick anywhere. He’d gone home then, to call and apologize, even though leaving Pete was the last thing he wanted. But back then, keeping the peace with Jerry seemed  _ so fucking important _ .

He backtracks, plays it again from the top, seeking the harmonic progression that conjured the memory. There it is – like, if he just opens his eyes, he’ll find Pete right in front of him, on the street outside of Max’s, watching him. He can taste the colors – pink sky, golden skin, amber eyes. He can see the shadow curving under Pete’s jawline. The awestruck look in his eyes. It feels so here-and-now. It was thirteen years ago.

His eyes flutter open again to a lack of color, just the simple black and white alternation of the piano keys. He picks up the pencil resting next to the staff paper on the music rack and writes down what he just played, then he pauses, considering. Finally he writes down, as a working title, “I’ve been dreaming about you.” The first words Pete ever said to him. God, what a fucking  _ line _ .

He came back to the city six months ago and he’s been busy enough between classes, office hours, student projects and his own research, but there are so many reminders here that he sometimes feels like he could just reach out and touch the past. So he’s been drowning in memories the whole time, and writing music as a coping mechanism, even if the songs have no lyrics and will never have any listeners. And there’s another thing – he sees him everywhere. The ghost of him lingers, always on the edge of Patrick’s visual field, filling him with some strong emotion that he’s unable to classify with precision but that feels pretty close to paralyzing fear. A messy head of jet black hair standing in line before him at Cafe Figaro; a tanned tattooed wrist peeking out from a shirt cuff on the 1 train; the collar of a leather jacket, turned up against the cold.

It’s never actually him – except, of course, for the picture on the back of vinyl sleeves at the record store. 

The album has been out for a couple of weeks, and Patrick has somehow resisted buying it thus far – of course, he will give up and get it eventually, just like he did with Pete’s first two solo records. Until then, he settles for looking at the back cover of “Avenue A” every time he’s browsing at Sounds or Musicophile. In the picture, Pete doesn’t look that different from the version in Patrick’s mind – less angular, maybe, his hair shorter. He’s standing in the sun, slouching against a wall in a tight white t-shirt and loose jeans, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a cigarette. He’s looking into the camera but his eyes are invisible behind mirrored aviator sunglasses, for which Patrick is half disappointed and half relieved. He can see the golden hue of Pete’s skin even though the photograph is black and white; he can recognize the patch under his jaw where the stubble used to grow between shaves, the roughness he used to press kisses to. 

It’s funny how you can know a person so deeply – every quirk of their bodies, every twist in their character, all the stories from which they’ve been shaped – and even after all that, they can still become a stranger. Pete – the shape he fills in the world – is still the dearest thing in Patrick’s mind. And yet he knows, if it weren’t for the records and the pictures, he would have forgotten his voice and his face by now. He’s already lost the sound of his own name on Pete’s lips. Sometimes he thinks he would give the last ten years of his life to have it back. 

“Oh, professor, sorry! Hello! Sorry, I knocked, but...”

Turning to the door, Patrick lets out a breath he’s been holding too long. He feels deeply grateful for the interruption. It’s not divine intervention, but it feels close – one of his students, and one of the nicer ones at that, come to save him from the deluge of nostalgia. 

“Hello, Brendon. Don’t worry, I was just lost in thought. Do you need the room?”

“Well, I mean, I booked it, but if you’re not done yet I can wait. Are you composing?”

“Not really. It’s… something personal.” 

“Oh, okay, sorry” says Brendon, wilting slightly, and Patrick feels bad for a second. The kid would probably be as enthusiastic about hearing his moody pop song as he is about hearing him explain the finer points of Music Theory for six hours a week – that is,  _ very _ enthusiastic. They got to talking one afternoon before class and Patrick figures Brendon is definitely not a snob – he listed Stephen Sondheim, Prince, and Balinese gamelan as his main current influences. Still – even though Patrick has stopped denying himself the simple pleasure of songwriting, telling other people about it still feels too much, too close to his past life. 

“No problem, I was done, anyway. I’ll see you in class on Monday. Take care, okay?” he says, trying for a reassuring smile. He gets up from the Steinway, picks up his stuff, and leaves the practice room to someone who will hopefully play some real music. Brendon waves goodbye, smiling brightly once again, looking all of six years old. 

It’s bitterly cold as he makes his way to the subway, walking quickly and huddling down into his coat. The sky is slate gray, not much lighter than the pavement on Broadway. He feels a rush of gratitude for Hayley and her outrageous birthday gifts, the latest one being the cashmere scarf from Burberry that is keeping him from freezing right now. 

The lighting on the train is harsh, casting every passenger in sharp shadows. Everyone is wearing dark colors – not that Patrick can judge in his black trench coat on black jeans and black boots. They all look like vampires, himself included. It’s sixteen stops to Christopher Street and he’s starting to get his traditional end-of-the-week headache. 

Being home is, as usual, a mixed blessing. This is the same apartment from which he disappeared – it was in his mother’s name, but she gave it back to him when he got the job at Columbia. She had been renting it out and everything is changed. New. This means that he can’t sit on the couch where Pete once fell asleep with a lit cigarette in his hand, scaring the life out of Patrick when he came home to the smell of burning. He can’t fix dinner on the stove where he made ugly misshapen pancakes the first time he cooked Pete breakfast. And most of all, blessedly, he can’t sleep in the bed where Pete fucked him for the first time, where they passed countless nights curled around each other sleeping, talking, listening to favorite records spinning away, where Patrick sang Pete to sleep dozens of times, soothing his nightmares, hoping, almost believing, that he could cure his fears and his insomnia and his addictions with the power of his voice. 

God, what a fucking dumb kid he was then. And god, how he needs a drink now.

In the kitchen, he grabs a beer from the fridge and clicks on the radio. The news is on: recession, unemployment, a car bombing in Beirut, baseball. He fiddles with the dial and lands on some music that is only slightly less depressing. He drains his beer and gets another one from the fridge along with the ingredients for a sandwich. He’s feeling better, almost back in his own skin, when an echoing bassline starts up after a few beats of silence and a voice he hasn’t been able to forget chants, “Glittering champagne and the end of pain.”

And he knows – he just knows, deep in his bones and his aching heart, that those lines are about them. 

For so long, Patrick used to focus on the bad memories. It was easier to justify his leaving if he remembered only the fights and the screaming and the slammed doors. But after a few years, the good ones came back, in waves. Like that time they drank champagne at the studio, to toast the completion of Pete’s album. Patrick brought over a bottle from the office, warm and dusty, a gift from somebody or other, and they used a cardboard box as an ice bucket, trading sticky kisses and drinking straight from the bottle until the champagne was gone and they were making out on the wet stained carpeted floor of the studio.

He used to have this antique emerald brooch once, a family heirloom – supposedly, it would bring luck to its owner. It was given to him by his mother, who had gotten it from her father, and so on. It should have been kept in the family, so he gave it to Pete, obviously, and maybe it even worked, since Pete neither overdosed nor killed himself, which had always seemed pretty likely, if you asked anyone. He gave the brooch to Pete, and in exchange he got this one particular memory of him that he cherishes like a talisman. Every once in a while, he carefully takes out the memory and polishes it until it sparkles with sinister beauty. This has both ruined him and saved him from crawling back to Pete so many times, over the years. 

There are no words to the memory: just Pete, getting out of the apartment, holding a suitcase, long black bangs over his face and deep black circles under his eyes, looking back at Patrick over his shoulder with eyes filled with tears and sadness and so much fucking disappointment. 

It turned out Patrick wasn’t his angel, after all – that was just a pretty term of endearment that he used sometimes. And of course he couldn’t save Pete, seeing as he couldn’t even save himself. He was just “the unfulfilled fucking promise of the end of pain” – Pete’s words, thrown at him in anger during their last fight. 

It's funny how beautiful people look when they’re walking out the door.

So “champagne and the end of pain” – it’s a symbol for the two of them, the bookends of their history. And it makes for a nice rhyming couplet, which is probably why Pete wrote it. 

On the kitchen counter, next to an unread copy of this week’s Village Voice and some sad fixings for an unmade sandwich, three empty beer bottles now stand in a neat row. That’s Patrick’s cue to get out of the house. It’s tempting, the prospect of drinking the night away and waking up tomorrow afternoon hungover as fuck, his head empty and blessedly free of the damned memories, at least for a while. But it’s something that he really doesn’t want to do anymore. 

So he rests his forehead against the kitchen cabinet, and picks up the wall phone, and dials Gerard and Frank’s number, and invites himself over to their place for dinner. Ten minutes after hanging up, he’s turning off the lights and shutting the door behind him. 

*

The Village Voice | Album Reviews   
**Pete Wentz: ‘Avenue A’ [Reprise 1984]   
** In his fourth solo album, the third with his formidable backing band made up of Joe Trohman (guitar), Lindsey Ballato (bass), and Andy Hurley (drums), Wentz channels all the energy and inspiration of his seminal work with The Snitches while embracing the reflective tone of his later albums. Lyrically, the usual nihilistic satire is replaced by nostalgic throwbacks to his 1972 masterpiece ‘Pretty in Punk’, his first and only collaboration with Patrick Vaughn ( _ see side interview _ ). ‘Avenue A’ is a post-punk masterpiece.  **A+  
** _ \--RC _

** _This year marks the tenth anniversary of Patrick Vaughn’s disappearance. Do you have any idea what happened to him?  
_ ** _ Well, I’ve always known that he was okay, because I was, y’know, notified by mutual friends that I shouldn’t worry. Well, they forgot at first, so there were a couple of days where I was pretty fucking concerned… anyway, yeah, they tell me he’s doing fine these days. But the last time he and I spoke was… about ten years ago, yeah. A few weeks before his so-called disappearance.  _

** _People have made conjectures about your relationship at the time, can you tell us anything about that?  
_ ** _ What, you really think somebody still cares about this? Okay then... what do you want to know? I wrote my best material with him, no doubt about it. I would give him the words and some melodies and he would cut up my lyrics until they made sense and complete it with music and a title. He was a fucking genius, I don’t know what he was doing wasting time with a fuckup like me (laughs). Make no mistake, I love my band now, I like how we work together… but writing with him was pretty fucking incredible.  _

** _Apparently there were fights and creative differences, though.  
_**_ We fought, sure. We worked together, we lived together... wouldn’t you fight, in that kind of situation? It was all so intense… he was so young, and I had been in a bad state before he came along. But he took care of me, he looked after me as well as he could. He salvaged me from annihilation – simple as that. I’ll always be grateful.  _

** _It has been said that he used you to change his image.  
_ ** _ Yeah, well, it has been said (by Gabe Saporta, you can quote me on this) that I’m “very sweet but very stupid.” You shouldn’t believe all the stupid shit people say, right? But, yeah, you know what? Since we’re dredging up the past, let’s get the record straight: neither of us ever used the other. We were… oh, fuck it. We were in love. Patrick… he was the light of my fucking life, man. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lyrics of Pete’s song that Patrick hears on the radio are taken from Iggy Pop’s “German Days”, which came out in 2016 but was written by Iggy as a nostalgic homage to his years in Berlin with his pal David Bowie in the late 1970s. 
> 
> Pete's interview contains several actual quotes from Iggy interviews about Bowie, while the insulting comment made by Gabe about Pete was something that Lou Reed actually said about Iggy. #fuckyoulou
> 
> [Come scream at me on tumblr!](https://carbonbased000.tumblr.com/)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Please don't leave my sight_   
_Give me all the love you have_   
_I need it more than air in my lungs_   


_ Fall 1971 _

When Patrick was nine years old, living downtown with his mom in a tiny studio above the co-op gallery where she showed her work, he had a best friend, the daughter of another artist in the same co-op. They saw each other every day while their mothers worked on their art, talked for hours, or cooked (someone had to feed all the starving artists). Mary was a couple of years older and one full head taller than him, and he thought her the greatest person to ever grace the earth. His childhood wasn’t completely happy, nor it was completely terrible – his mom sometimes forgot that she was supposed to take care of him, but it wasn’t as bad as that: there was always someone around willing to help, and quite soon Patrick was so focused on his music that he also forgot that he was supposed to be taken care of. His childhood memories were fuzzy, inaccurate, fading into one another, but Mary felt like a consistently good thing when he looked back. And all through the long hours spent playing, and talking, and making up stories, what he could remember most strongly was the desire to impress her – a feeling of liking her so much that, if she didn’t like him back, he would have simply disappeared into thin air. 

He was reminded suddenly of that feeling when Pete knocked on his door. It was so stupid – they had talked and kissed for hours and slept together and fooled around, and here he was, a nervous wreck just because Pete was going to see his fucking apartment. Which was a great apartment, by the way – if anything, Patrick sometimes thought it was too much: too big for one person, filled with too many things. But it was beautiful to him. His mom had helped him decorate and had given him a few of her paintings and sculptures. 

When he opened the door, however, Pete didn’t seem to be very much aware of his surroundings. He was looking down at his hands, which were mostly hidden inside the sleeves of his jacket. He looked up at Patrick for a moment and immediately lowered his eyes again, scratching his neck and saying, “Hi” in a hoarse voice. On the phone, earlier, when Patrick had called to invite him over, he’d sounded alright, but now he seemed closed off, almost shy, which was so unexpected in light of what had happened the day before that for a second Patrick was completely at a loss. But even then, there was something about Pete that just made him want to reach out and touch, so he did just that. He took Pete’s hand in his own and pulled him inside, closing the door behind him. Pete seemed to unwind a little, his shoulders lowered, his hand clutching Patrick’s. 

Patrick moved into his space and kissed him, shallow and sweet, pressing him back against the door, trying to kiss the hesitation out of him.  _It’s me_, he tried to remind him with the way their lips lined up so perfectly. _It’s us_, he said with the slide of his fingers through messy black hair. 

Pete sighed and kissed him back, slumping against him, wrapping his arms around his neck. “Sorry, I got so nervous coming here,” he muttered into Patrick’s shoulder. “I convinced myself you would change your mind.”

“Change my mind about what?”

“About me. About… all of this.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Patrick said, half laughing. “I called you because I couldn’t stop thinking about you, I couldn’t fucking wait to see you again.”

“Yeah?” he asked, leaning back a bit and biting his lip, finally meeting his eyes. Patrick nodded. Pete gazed at him very intently. “Yeah?” he said again, and then, “Fuck, me too. I was just sitting there, all day long, missing you… it’s crazy. I was thinking–” he trailed off and brushed his lips against Patrick’s, touching his cheekbones with the pads of his fingers, lightly. They felt cool on Patrick’s skin, which meant he was blushing. Pete’s eyes darkened. “You look so good like this,” he said in a low voice. Patrick felt himself shudder all over. He closed his eyes and leaned in again to kiss him. He decided then and there that he was made for kissing Pete – it was better than singing, better than breathing, better than anything else. How had he lived his life until then without _this_, without knowing how it felt to kiss him for endless minutes, to share the same air through locked lips, without Pete’s hands stroking warmth under his shirt and around his waist? 

“Patrick, wait–” Pete said, breaking the kiss. Patrick followed mindlessly, trying to chase him back. “Wait, wait–” Pete was breathless, but he was smiling now. It was the same smile from the day before – when they’d woken up the second time, Pete had made coffee and while Patrick was drinking it, sitting at the kitchen table, babbling about some bizarre experimental theater performance he’d seen recently or maybe that thing Frank had told him about the production of the Snitches’ record, Pete had looked down at him from where he was half-sitting on the counter and he had thrown at him this incredible smile that had lit up the whole room and made him forget what the fuck he was talking about. Now, Patrick felt so happy to see that smile again that he actually stopped and listened to what Pete was trying to say. Which was, “Patrick, baby, if I start touching you now I’m not going to fucking stop, and I really, really want you to play those songs for me.”

Patrick laughed and then he took a deep breath and clutched Pete’s hand and pulled him to the couch. “Okay, you’re right. You stay here and I’ll just get my guitar.”

Pete sat down and Patrick went to pick up his favorite Gibson from the bench behind the piano. “I always write on an acoustic, for some reason,” he said, while he looked for a pick and for the notebook where he had jotted down the chords. “And I like this one, uhm, it’s a crappy guitar, honestly, but my dad gave it to me so… you know.” Of course, Pete didn’t know precisely why that was so significant, and he didn’t press for details; he just hummed to show he was listening. Maybe Patrick would tell him the whole story, someday.

When he turned around, he stopped and watched Pete for a second. He had taken off his jacket and draped it on the back of the couch and now he was sitting quietly and taking in the room. Patrick didn’t always like having people in his space, but somehow seeing Pete there just _fit_, like the cognac leather of the couch had been specifically chosen to bring out the gold in Pete’s skin, like Patrick’s mom had especially brought the burgundy velvet throw from her trip to Paris as the perfect setoff to the jet black of Pete’s hair. He looked like he belonged, and Patrick wanted to keep him there, safe and warm, like a promise, like an oath.

He sat down next to him, set the guitar on his knee, and was again caught by another emotion he hadn’t felt in a really long time, something that felt awfully close to stage fright. Pete looked at him expectantly and Patrick suddenly felt like a little kid. It wasn’t new, either, this perception of being just a spoiled child, a kid who’d had it all without ever really working for it, just a pretty young thing with a nice voice and a smart manager who had found a way to capitalize on his innocuous talents. But then Pete smiled at him, again – and when he did, Patrick felt something below his skin quicken, something golden and true moving deep inside himself.

Pete smiled and smiled and Patrick tried to delay the inevitable – because Pete wouldn’t like the song, it was still a mess of a song and it wasn’t even right for him, too slow, nothing like the frenzied underground anthems of his former band. 

“This is the best one, I think,” he said, tuning the guitar half a step down. “I like the chord patterns. It needs an electric guitar, of course, just as another layer… Oh, and I have a bass part written that might work, too, but you should get the idea, even just like this. I wrote it right after I saw your show in LA, and it felt like it might work for you… I mean. It’s nothing much. But I wrote it thinking of you.”

Finally out of distractions, he played what he thought of as the opening riffs, and then started on the repeating patterns that he liked, hearing the electric guitar layered over them in his head, humming out the harmonies. With all those parts missing, and without any lyrics, it probably didn’t make much sense. Pete didn’t make a sound. When Patrick got to the end of the bridge, he stopped and looked up. 

Pete was perfectly still, watching him with huge dark eyes. “It’s really good, Patrick, don’t stop… oh, actually, wait. Wait, wait, wait. I’ve got something…”

He rummaged through the pockets of his jacket until he found a thin, battered composition book folded in half. He leafed through it until he found what he was looking for, then he ripped out two pages and shoved them at Patrick with a wild look in his eyes. 

“Can you– You said you don’t have lyrics, right? Can you try with these?”

Patrick ran his eyes over the messy block handwriting, and realized at once that, somehow, he already knew the melody for the lyrics that Pete had just given him. 

While he was writing, all those different parts had come to him but he couldn’t really make them coalesce, except that he knew they belonged together and were connected by the same feeling – something sensual and haunting at the same time, something like the reaction he’d had to seeing Pete perform on that badly lit stage that very first night. With the lyrics in front of him, though, everything came together. He got to the end, collected himself for a moment, and played it again from start to finish. And there it was: a song, elegant and obsessive – a song. A song about a beautiful and dangerous thing that could be your ruin, drive you out of your mind, if you just let it. In order for it to make sense, they had to tangle it all together: Patrick’s music needed Pete’s words, and Pete’s words needed Patrick’s music back. 

As the last chord stopped ringing in the air between them, they looked at each other, perfectly still. They had made, the two of them, in mere minutes, a whole, perfect song. They were both breathing hard, Patrick’s knuckles white where he was clutching the neck of his guitar too tightly. Pete moved first, all nervous fluid grace, every trace of the shyness and hesitation he’d showed before completely vanished. He lifted the guitar from Patrick’s lap and rested it gently on the hardwood floor. Then he slid to his knees between Patrick’s legs and took his face in his hands, looking up at him with those unbelievable eyes of amber and gold and asked him urgently, “Do you need to write it down?”

Patrick shook his head – he would remember every fucking note until he breathed his last breath – and immediately Pete was kissing him hungrily, wildly, gasping between frantic kisses, “Patrick, Patrick, you don’t even know–” and “I thought I couldn’t want you more” and “I was so fucking wrong” and “Patrick, Patrick, _Patrick_.”

He fell back on the couch and pulled Pete on top of him, wanting him closer, so much closer – he felt like their bodies were connected by a string and some higher being had just pulled it tight and they were absolutely powerless, they had no other possible choice but to be crushed together until they crumbled. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> – But Carbon, wtf were they writing? 
> 
> – Thank you so much for asking, they were writing _Gimme Danger_, a.k.a. my favorite song of all time. [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaDdH9Pqwq8) you can see the version sung by Ewan McGregor as Curt Wild in the film – it’s a great performance which was pretty life-changing for my 16 y.o. self. And [here](https://genius.com/The-stooges-gimme-danger-lyrics) you can read the lyrics.
> 
> Also, should anyone be interested in my weird, weird headcanons, [this](http://www.jeraldmelberg.com/Portals/0/Frank/Flower.jpg) is one of Patrick’s mom’s sculptures – she is based on a real artist named Mary Frank.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Now if you will be my lover_   
_I will shiver and sing_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***** WARNING – in this chapter, a character talks about an episode where something sexual and non fully consensual happened. Nothing really bad happens on or off-screen, but if you think this might trigger you, please take care of yourself. You can either stop reading after Patrick says “Right, well, nothing much, then” and start again with the paragraph starting with "So – Friday, at least for a few hours", OR if you need more details, feel free to [drop me a message on Tumblr](https://carbonbased000.tumblr.com/) and I'll try to answer any questions *****
> 
> Also, please note that the rating has changed. Explicit, baby.

_ Fall 1971 _

  
  


It was Friday and Pete was smoking his third cigarette in a row, folded arms resting on the window sill of Patrick’s kitchen, looking towards the bright city lights without really seeing them. Friday – which meant he’d met Patrick exactly a week ago. One week, and he felt like everything had been turned upside down. Or rather right-side up – if there was a time when everything felt wrong, it was before. They’d barely left the apartment since Sunday. He’d gone back to Joe’s once to get some clothes and tell him not to worry if he didn’t show up for a few days, that he wasn’t shooting up in a hotel or dead in an alley somewhere but just staying at Patrick’s, hanging around and writing.

One week, and they had a dozen songs. They almost had an _ album_, which was a crazy thought – too much too soon. (But then, Pete had always been a too-much-too-soon kind of guy.) Writing with Patrick did feel crazy, in the best possible way – it had never felt that electric, with other people; never felt that easy. Patrick’s music was violently beautiful, or maybe the other way around; in any case it was the very thing Pete had been chasing forever and forever failing to pull off with his band. Former band. Those guys could all rot in hell for all he cared, by the way, because he never wanted to make music with anyone who wasn’t Patrick again.

So he told Joe about the writing and he told him, because Joe had become a good friend and Pete knew how he worried, that just being in Patrick’s vicinity was helping him get some sleep and consume meals other than coffee. What he didn’t tell Joe was how they kept falling into bed – or on the couch, or on the rug, or in the absurdly big bathtub – to fool around for hours and find out all the ways they could make each other fall apart. Well, most of the ways. Patrick was so easy for him, so responsive, singing out moans and gasping supplications that made him half insane – it was always so _ good _ that Pete almost didn’t notice the way sometimes Patrick paused, how every so often he seemed to shiver with nerves more than need. It was always so good that he almost didn’t ask. But he wanted to do something right for once – sure, it was a given that he’d screw up this thing with Patrick someday, someway, but not so soon, and not because of this. 

Pete was very aware that, until very recently, he used to be an awful, nasty, horrible, destructive, self-centered prick with a pair of silver leather pants. He didn’t even remember a lot of shit he’d done but he used to be high off his head most of the time and that sure didn’t help him give a fuck about other people. No one except Ashlee ever stuck around for long, so he hoped he hadn’t messed anybody up too bad, but still, he felt truly sorry for every idiot who’d ever looked at him and decided that bringing him home would be a good idea. 

However, this was different. He was mostly clean now, and he was trying to be less of a jerk, and this was _ Patrick_. Messing up a kid like Patrick would be the worst thing he’d ever do, just. Fucking _ unforgivable_. 

So. Earlier that evening, they’d finally gotten out of the house to eat at an Italian place on Bleecker Street, coming back after dinner to settle on the couch with a bottle of red wine, and he’d figured that it was as good a time as any to ask Patrick if he’d ever been fucked. 

“I’ve been with girls,” he’d replied, which wasn’t what Pete had asked.

“Okay, what about guys?”

Patrick sighed, blushed, and waved his hand in Pete’s direction with a flourish.

“I meant before me, Patrick.”

“Right, well, nothing much, then,” he finally said, and blushed more. Pete had sat himself down an arm’s length away, in the hope that some physical distance might help him fight the urge to just let the whole thing go and fuck him right there on the couch, first time or not. But seeing Patrick blush still made him weak – he got closer and put his lips on the flush on his cheekbones, and then he couldn’t resist kissing him and tucking a rebellious strand of hair behind his ear. Patrick sighed again, closed his eyes, and stroked his cheek into his palm. Pete hadn’t gotten much better at domesticating his discordant feelings when it came to Patrick – he wanted to fucking _ destroy _ him, and to wrap him in his arms and protect him from every ugly thing in the world.

“I mean, there was this one time Gabe… you know Gabe, right? So, a few months ago, when I realized I might be into guys, I got, uhm, I got a little crush on him,” Patrick said, opening his eyes but keeping them down. Pete lowered his hand and rested it on the back of the couch, close to Patrick’s shoulder but not touching. He did know Gabe – who didn’t? The guy was everywhere, with his band and a pretty girl or boy on his arm, always on speed or Methedrine. Everybody loved him, thought him so cool, but Pete saw right through him – he was way more ambitious than talented, always with a little agenda of his own. Pete had never dallied, but he’d heard stories about how he liked to manipulate people. Patrick with a crush on Gabe was not a good premise, at all. “It wasn’t serious or anything, I think it was just that, you know, he’s always having affairs with boys and girls and saying that everybody’s bisexual and things like that. Nothing happened, but we hung out sometimes,” Patrick went on, still not meeting his eyes. “And, uh– this one time, he brought us to this club... Ernie’s, I think it’s called.” Pete froze. He knew Ernie’s. It was the kind of place with jars of Vaseline on the bar and a very badly illuminated back room. Patrick glanced up for a second and Pete tried for an encouraging smile, because he really wanted to know exactly how much pain he needed to inflict on Gabe Saporta, “So we went to that bar, and he took me to the back room and told me to, uhm, to go down on this guy who was there. But I didn’t know what I was doing, and I wasn’t really into it…”

Pete’s blood started pounding in his ears. He suddenly wanted to kill somebody – the faceless guy in the back room, every goddamn guy in that goddamn bar, _ fucking Gabe Saporta _ and his great ideas. The week before, he would have gotten up and stormed out, punched a wall at the very least. But Patrick was in front of him, still blushing furiously, like _ he _ was ashamed – so Pete tried to breathe, clear his head, and with a calmness he didn’t feel at all but he could at least fake, he said, “Baby, it’s okay. You can tell me, if you want, but you don’t have to.”

Patrick seemed to shrink in on himself then, which punched all the anger right out of Pete and replaced it with an aching tenderness. Every molecule in the air felt unstable, like one wrong word could do irreparable damage. He took Patrick into his arms and Patrick slumped against him.

“Jesus, I’m such a wuss,” he said eventually, slightly shaking his head against Pete’s shoulder. “Nothing happened, honestly. The guy got a bit rough, but my friend Frank was there and he punched him and we were out of there pretty fast. That’s it. Just a crappy night.”

Somehow, Pete was able to say, “Yeah, and a crappy place. I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have been there. That’s not your scene. Fuck, it’s not even mine.”

“Yeah,” Patrick muttered into Pete’s neck, burrowing closer. Pete placed a kiss on the top of his head. “Anyway, I guess that’s the extent of my experience with guys. Before you. Since you asked.”

So – Friday, at least for a few hours, which meant Gabe Saporta was at Max’s, either drinking cocktails in a booth or snorting something in the bathroom, blissfully unaware of the fact that he was a dead man. There was no doubt in Pete’s mind that one week ago, he would have found him and dragged him out by the hair from whatever hole he’d crawled into and proceeded to beat him to a pulp – and with a pretty good chance of winning, too, because even though Gabe was objectively stronger, he was also completely wasted most of the time, and one well-placed punch was all it would take to bring him down. 

On the other hand, the last time he had checked in on him Patrick was still sleeping, and Pete wanted nothing more than to curl up next to him and try to fall asleep to the soft rhythm of his breathing. 

*

When Patrick woke up it was still dark and he was alone. He hugged his pillow and curled up tighter, wanting to stay inside that warm bubble of silence a little longer. Looking up, he saw Pete leaning against the door frame, a dark shadow against the half light coming from the hallway. Patrick smiled up at him. “Hmm, what time is it?”

“Late. Early.”

“Come back to bed,” he said, and watched as Pete walked up to him, pulled his shirt off over his head and slid under the covers, his skin cold against Patrick’s, his hair smelling like cigarettes and wind and fall. 

“C’mon, go back to sleep,” Pete mumbled into his shoulder. Patrick stroked the side of his head and kissed him softly. Pete kissed back quickly, restless. “It’s okay, I’ve slept enough,” Patrick said. “Everything alright?” Pete just kissed him again, deeper and more urgent, and Patrick went with it. 

He clutched Pete’s arm, feeling the muscles work under his skin. Pete’s body was so much more defined than his own – he loved the contrast, and he’d figured out over the past several days that Pete liked it too. Sure enough, Pete sighed and finally put his hands on him. He twisted his fingers in the hair at the nape of Patrick’s neck and held him still while they kissed; he wrapped his other hand around Patrick’s waist and pulled him tight against him, sliding his leg between Patrick’s in one swift motion. This was the part where Patrick usually stopped being able to think, stopped being able to _ stop _, and they rubbed against each other until they got off, or Pete sucked him down and then Patrick returned the favor and got hard again the moment Pete forgot he shouldn’t pull on his hair. This time, though, he forced himself to stop and break the kiss to say, “Wait, Pete, wait.”

“What’s wrong?” Pete asked, breathless, visibly struggling to hold himself back, and Patrick could have said that feeling that _ wanted _ didn’t go to his head, but it would have been a big lie.

“Nothing, I just–” 

On a slightly more rational level than the one he was operating on, Patrick was freaking out – he had told Pete about that night, about Gabe and those frightening ten minutes in the back room, and this made everything more real. He’d told him, and even though they had already razed to the ground any kind of barrier the minute they met, it was like there was even less separating them now, like the thing that was pulling them together had become even stronger, erasing any doubt. And now he was letting go of his last shred of hesitation and was going to– He was going to–

“Patrick? Honey, please tell me what’s wrong.” 

“I just want.”

“What do you want, baby? Tell me.”

Every time Pete called him _ baby _ his heart skipped a beat. The way he looked at him, hungry and so unbearably sweet. Oh god, he was going to die from this. He was going to die if Pete told him no. 

“Just want you, Pete. I want you to fuck me, I want it so bad, god, please–” and now that he’d started babbling he couldn’t stop, couldn’t shut up long enough to allow the possibility of a rejection. Pete kissed him, hot and dirty and messy, until Patrick stopped trying to speak and started whimpering. 

“Fuck, Patrick... you really think you need to _ beg _ for this?” he muttered. “You don’t have a fucking clue what you do to me, do you?” 

Somehow, Pete was now on top of him, his hips slotted between his thighs and his hands pinning down his wrists above his head. Patrick moaned helplessly, dizzy with want. 

“Are you sure?” Pete whispered, so close that Patrick felt his breath hot on his lips. 

“So sure. Yeah,” he replied, whispering too – it was the middle of the night and everything was silent and they were alone and very soon Pete was going to be _ inside him_. Oh god. “Oh god, Pete, _ do something_.” 

Pete kissed him sweet and slow, again and again, didn’t stop until Patrick’s breath evened out a bit. Then he released his wrists, kissing one after the other and pressed them gently into the mattress beside his head. Patrick closed his eyes then and didn’t see how Pete slid slowly down his body, but he felt lips on his neck, fingers stroking down his sides, soft bites on his belly and finally, as his breathing picked up again, Pete’s hands pulling his briefs down his legs and then holding his hips down firmly. Patrick moaned desperately as his hot mouth took him in. He didn’t understand how anything could possibly feel _ more _ than this, but then Pete’s lips were sliding off him and he was saying, “I’ll go slow, but you need to tell me if you want to stop, okay, baby?”

Patrick tried to speak, he did, but he was beyond “okay”, beyond “yes”, so he just moaned his consent, knowing Pete would understand.

Then there were fingers in his mouth, which he sucked on instinctively, whining when they were taken away. Pete began to open him up, going as slow as he promised, watching him intently, gently stroking his hip and his thigh with his free hand. Two fingers, and it stung. Patrick sucked in a breath and Pete stopped, went back to sucking him until the pressure inside him felt less weird and the burning subsided. Patrick pushed back a bit, tentatively. 

Pete shushed him, slid his fingers out slowly, and slid back up to kiss him, resting their foreheads together. “No one’s ever done this to you,” he murmured, fervently. His eyes were pools of black. It wasn’t really a question, but Patrick shook his head anyway. “I need to go get something. Turn around and wait for me, baby, okay?”

Patrick turned on his front and waited. Feeling the cold air on his skin was enough to make him shiver, the sensation of the sheets rubbing against him almost unbearable. He needed Pete’s touch and his warmth more than breathing. 

Pete was back very soon, setting something down on the bedside table; he stretched out on top of him and began pressing kisses at the nape of his neck, down his spine, stopping at the small of his back. When he got back to opening him up his fingers were slippery and he murmured in his ear, “So beautiful,” and “So good for me, you’re doing so good,” and Patrick felt himself melt under his touch and his reassurance. Then Pete crooked his fingers a certain way and Patrick’s stomach dropped violently and he suddenly wanted _ more_, and _ now_.

Pete laughed softly under his breath, and Patrick didn’t know he had said that aloud; but then, he didn’t know anything right then except for Pete’s touch and Pete’s voice and his cock pressed hard and hot against his leg and Patrick wanted. He wanted. “More, Pete, please, fuck.”

“I’ve got you,” he said, and slid out his fingers, still so careful even if Patrick could feel him trembling all over. “You ready?” 

“Yes, please, please,” Patrick said, and then Pete’s dick was pressed against his hole, not even pushing in, not yet, and it felt fucking _ huge _and Patrick tensed up all over again. 

“Oh baby. We can stop,” Pete said. 

“But I want it,” Patrick mumbled. “Want _ you_.” 

“It’s okay. I want you too. So fucking much. C’mere,” Pete said, softly, and kissed him, honey-sweet, and Patrick let himself be kissed, and breathed slow and his body surrendered and he felt the strongest pressure but no pain as Pete entered him so gently, so slowly, until he was inside him most of the way. 

Patrick realized he was panting, his forehead covered with sweat and his eyes full of unshed tears. He felt so fucking _ full_, like he was going to burst and split into two perfect halves. He said Pete’s name on a breathless sob.

Pete kissed him again and again but remained perfectly still where he was buried inside him. “Oh fuck, Patrick. You okay?” 

“Yeah. It doesn’t– doesn’t hurt. Just. You’re fucking _ big_,” and that made them laugh, but then laughing hurt so Patrick had to stop. He was smiling, though, when he said, “You can move.”

“Yeah?” Pete stroked back the sweaty hair stuck to his forehead and brushed their lips together again, taking Patrick’s hand in his and threading their fingers together. “Okay. It’s going to feel weird at first–” and he slid halfway out, and it was true, it did feel weird. But then he was pushing in again, and again, still so gentle, and Patrick wasn’t ready, after all, he wasn’t prepared for how good it felt to be fucked, to clutch Pete’s hand and feel his weight pressing him into the mattress and just _ take it_. He was moaning constantly now, and Pete was panting hotly into his neck and babbling, “Oh god, you feel so good, baby, you’re–” 

Pete angled his hips and dragged against that spot again and Patrick shut his eyes and groaned. Pete fucked him slow and deep, hitting that spot over and over again until he was sobbing and begging, left with no words that weren’t _ please_.

“So tight, Patrick, fuck, I can’t–” and then Pete untangled their hands, leaving Patrick to grasp desperately at the sheets, reached out a hand underneath him, and dragged his palm lightly over his cock once. Patrick cried out and came apart so completely that he saw glittering stars falling behind his eyelids and then everything went black.

He felt, distantly, through the blood rushing in his ears, the dirty and exciting sensation of Pete pulsing and coming deep inside him, filling him up. _ Yes, good, yours_, his brain said with extreme satisfaction. “Yours,” he repeated out loud, unthinkingly, and Pete whimpered and twitched where he was still half-hard deep inside of him, and growled, “Mine,” and bit him on the back of his neck, and Patrick finally got why everyone was always talking about Pete being raised by actual wolves but yeah, he didn’t mind at all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Until last month I thought I would never write smut lol


End file.
